


The Cultivation of Orchids

by hickorysleeve



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 05:08:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4551741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hickorysleeve/pseuds/hickorysleeve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a certain peace in bitterness that is difficult to explain.  Neville has been cultivating it like an orchid, a lovely thing growing out of a steaming pile of shit. // A story of teenage hormones, and then of actually doing something with those teenage hormones as adults.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cultivation of Orchids

**Author's Note:**

> My friend requested Neville/Draco for his birthday and was unfortunately very vague on what he wanted, so I got to do what _I_ wanted. Congrats and happy birthday. I haven't written anything for the HP fandom in like 10 years, so sorry for canonical errors.
> 
> Also, while the majority of this work takes place during Order of the Phoenix (1995/96), positively NONE of the sexual conduct takes place then! While I am fully aware that fifteen year olds are prone to shenanigans, Neville and Draco have no ability to realize their hormonal urges, and so have to wait until post-Second Wizarding War (probably circa 2000 for them, so they're 20ish).

There is a certain peace in bitterness that is difficult to explain. Neville has been cultivating it like an orchid, a lovely thing growing out of a steaming pile of shit. He can relay a lot of things that he is bitter about—a great many of them Slytherins or related to the house—but he has been trying, in recent years, to cultivate it all into tranquility and peace and understanding. Like a Hufflepuff, or something. Because it’s better, he supposes, to suffer the slew of insults and degradation with the calm determination of an orchid, growing out of a pile of shit, than to flail on about it like the Whomping Willow. He really, honestly hopes it will make a difference in his outlook on these things one day.

Malfoy sits down next to him in Herbology, and Neville reminds himself that orchids do not kick people’s stools out from under them, no matter how many times they’d had their stools kicked out from under them over the past four and a half years. He doesn’t ask why Malfoy would come anywhere near his table, when there is a slew of Slytherins across the room that are talking behind their hands. He doesn’t say anything to Malfoy. And Malfoy, for once, doesn’t say anything to him. They work in the dirt in silence, cultivating truffles the size of Neville’s thumb. Neville doesn’t think he’s ever seen Malfoy put his hands in the dirt before; he gets it under his nails, and still says nothing.

\--

Defense Against the Dark Arts under Umbridge is so mind numbingly boring that Neville is certain he is regressing back in intelligence. He manages not to tell anyone but Gryffindors, and a handful of Ravenclaws, this, because even the few Hufflepuffs he’s friends with would probably make a joke at the expense of his intelligence. He makes sure never to make such a comment within ear shot of a Slytherin, quite sure they would deride him for days on end.

Malfoy practically glows in her attention, and Neville thinks about all of Umbridge’s eerie, kitschy cat trinkets, and thinks of Malfoy more like a cat than like the ferret he got turned into a years prior. As slinky as he is, he’s sleek, more like one of those large-eared Siamese that finds it necessary to let everyone know its opinion on everything.

Neville’s not quite sure when he got the opinion that Malfoy was sleek _or_ slinky, and he’s not sure if he entirely likes it. While his brain is turning to mush in DADA, he stares at the back of Padma Patil’s head.

\--

Once, he comes into the wash room, and Malfoy is bent over the sink heaving like he’s got fire in his lungs. They stare at each other in the mirror, in capable of looking away. Neville’s chest is uncomfortably tight. There are tears running down Malfoy’s face. Neville leaves him to his peace without a sounds.

\--

It is evening, nearing the newly imposed curfew, and Neville is sitting on the edge of the lake, watching the squid occasionally lift a tentacle above the water to swat at gnats before sinking down again. Neville thinks of home, often, when he sits on the bank of the lake. There is nothing about the lake that, particularly, reminds him of home; it is more that he knows his parents also used to sit on the lake, and he wonders if they ever have the capacity to miss it. He hopes some small part of them can at least remember what a lake is.

“Longbottom.”

Neville sighs a little bit. He looks out toward the streaks of the sun setting behind the hills, rather than at Malfoy talking behind him.

“I’ve still got time before curfew, Malfoy. You can’t get on me for it.”

Something thick and dreading hangs between them in the silence, that Neville can’t put his finger on and that he’s not entirely sure he wants to. He continues to not look back at Malfoy for an incredible amount of time; such is the art of cultivating bitterness orchids in the shit of humiliation and abuse.

“Just get inside.”

\--

Once, Neville is practicing his patronus charm in the hall between the kitchens and the Slytherin common room. It is mostly happenstance that it is that hall—an empty one, at the moment, during his free period; and it is dank enough to be imposing but he can still think good thoughts. Malfoy rounds the corner as he gets off a good one, and stares at him like he’s seen the face of God, or perhaps the devil himself.

\--

Once, when Neville catches Malfoy at that heaving cry in the wash room, he does not leave. They are the only ones—of course, or Malfoy would not allow himself. Neville pulls a kerchief from his pocket and wets the corner in another sink, coming to him slowly.

“What are you—?”

“Hold still,” Neville says. He is amazed his voice does not tremble. Malfoy seems amazed by it as well, because he does. So Neville cleans his face of tears and snot until the only sign of crying are the bloodshot eyes.

There is too much bitterness for Neville to offer his condolences over whatever it is that is weighing on Malfoy. A part of him elates to see the other boy shattered like this, for all the times that he himself ended up in wash rooms and his own bed weeping for words that cut too deeply. But Neville is cultivating peace, or trying.

He is half an inch from their noses touching when the wash room door opens and a Ravenclaw first year steps in. He and Malfoy jump apart, and Malfoy flees like the hem of his robes are on fire. The Ravenclaw doesn’t even notice that either of them are there.

\--

Malfoy corners him as the stairs shift, and Neville is already reaching for his wand. Even if they aren’t supposed to do anything like that— _Educational Decree Thirty-three, no duels in the hallways or on the stairs_!—old habits are nowhere near dying off.

The staircase settles and Malfoy steps off, clearly expecting Neville to follow, and while he does not trust the other boy, he is at least confident in the hexes he’s been learning with Harry and the others to get a jump on Malfoy while his back is turned. He follows him, a few steps down the hall and around the corner.

Suddenly, Malfoy’s back is not turned.

Suddenly, their noses are not half an inch apart.

Neville had always read that kisses tasted like things—distinct things, like peppermint or cinnamon or chocolate, or the last thing the person ate. Malfoy, for the most part, just tastes a lot like mouth. Which is not, in itself, an unpleasant thing to taste like, but Neville was not expecting it, and so he makes a very undignified noise and sort of stumbles, and their teeth clack together, and their noses bump a bit painfully.

“Ow,” Malfoy says. “You’re positively awful at this.”

“You—you surprised me!”

It is a bit dark in the hall, and Neville is sure he should have said something a bit more intelligent than that. Especially considering— “And isn’t this against all those _rules_ you’re helping along?”

Malfoy is quiet a moment. He puts his hands on Neville’s upper arms—not his shoulders—and does not squeeze or push.

“I don’t honestly think Umbridge has thought of something like _this_.”

Neville isn’t sure if Malfoy means interhouse fraternization, or something queer. But probably both, come to think of it.

He swallows, and opens his mouth to say something cheeky, but the words that come out are, “Why me?” and that is just a stupid thing to ask.

Malfoy doesn’t answer him. He leans in and kisses him again, and this time, Neville is ready, so he kisses back.

\--

Dean and Seamus were the only queer men Neville knew in Gryffindor, and so the only ones that he really trusted. Though Dean had flirted and kissed a couple of girls over the past few years, Seamus seemed to be exclusively smitten with their friend, and all of them had just gotten over that. Neville, himself, had never really thought about anyone any which way at all, except that Ginny and Padma Patil and Hannah Abbott were awful pretty and very smart, and now he kept thinking of Malfoy with descriptors like _lanky_ and _sleek_ and the like.

Neville sits down with Dean and Seamus in the common room over Astronomy homework, looks between them, and decides that Seamus is probably safer to ask.

“How did you _know_?”

“Know what?”

“That you were…you know.”

Dean gives him a flat look. Seamus laughs, and looks ready to detail some incriminating and highly personal story until Dean kicks him under the table.

Neville’s ears and forehead go all hot.

“I just knew,” Seamus says. That doesn’t help Neville at all. He looks at Dean for help instead.

Dean smiles and elbows Seamus a little. “This lummox, that’s how.”

“That’s…that’s it?” Neville can’t believe that Seamus was the _exception_ for Dean, not with how much the two clearly adore each other. The two of them both shrug a bit. “But what if—what if one of you’d been in another house, do you think—?”

Dean and Seamus blink at him, and then look at each other. Neville’s whole face goes hot as they both lean over the table a little and Seamus lowers his voice conspiratorially.

“Tell us everything.”

\--

Neville cannot call meeting in dark corners of the castle to kiss Malfoy dating. It isn’t dating. It is, in fact, probably the exact opposite of dating. Especially since he doesn’t even, really, like Malfoy all that much; nor does Malfoy, particularly, seem to care for him. They spend a lot of their time, even in the midst of kissing, pushing one another up against the rough rock and biting and manhandling a bit.

But it is always just kissing.

Neville was cultivating frustration on top of his peace. It was a different colored orchid. The peace orchid, if it had a color, was violet. Soft and dark and soothing. Unassuming. Vaguely vengeful. The peace orchid came from a place of resentment and agitation. It came from a place that told all the people that had ever told him that he would fail, that he was worthless and stupid and would never amount to anything, that they were wrong. The frustration orchid was red. It glowered at him. It was his own resentment, internalized at what he was doing, and redirected at Malfoy for doing it to him. And it festered a little, a simmering boil in his belly that burned up in him when he was around Malfoy for any and every reason.

Some days, Neville worries that there is only enough room in all his bitterness to grow one orchid at a time, and he worries that the frustration will choke out the peace. He is especially prone to thinking about that while Malfoy has his fingers curled in his hair and his mouth on his jaw and they are standing so close together but never quite touching.

\--

Once, they do not go to a dark corner, but to one of the towers. It is quiet up there, and cool, well past curfew. If Neville were braver, he thinks he would say, “Won’t we get in trouble for this?” but he is not so brave to ask. He thinks he is not even brave enough to put words to things any more.

Malfoy _does_ taste like spearmint this time, and Neville is positive he brushed his teeth before he came. He’s too conscious, then, of the differences in their mouths.

Malfoy cuffs his ear.

“Quit thinking, or you’ll hurt yourself.”

“Don’t…don’t hit me.” It comes out more a question then a command. Malfoy looks ready to do it again, and Neville grabs his wrist instead. “I mean it.”

He has never touched Malfoy’s wrists before. They are very thin and the skin very fair. He pushes Malfoy toward the wall, holding his wrist. Neville has never felt bigger than Malfoy before, but he does, for a moment, as he kisses him again.

\--

In Herbology, Malfoy sits beside him silently once again. Other Slytherins talk behind their hands. Dean and Seamus look at Neville with big eyes, suddenly understanding. Neville shakes his head, very slowly.

Harry and Ron look like they could set the world on fire.

Malfoy has dirt under his nails.

\--

The first time he touches Malfoy—really _touches_ him—is on the last Hogsmeade weekend before Umbridge takes those away from them as well. It is a frigidly cold day. They had made no plans to cross paths, but they never do. Somehow, their line of sight crossed and Neville knew that it was going to happen.

There is nowhere particularly private, but years and generations of teenagers fumbling around have created a number of locations around the village that are at least disingenuously concealed from prying eyes. They habitually check to make sure no one has come looking for either one of them between hurried kisses. Neville’s teeth feel chapped and ruined, from the cold and from Malfoy’s mouth.

He pushes Malfoy against the side of the building they’re hiding beside and presses his whole body against him, breathes against his mouth for a moment as the world tilts slightly around them. Malfoy makes a noise, somewhere in the back of his nose, and shifts back against him, his fingers like ice on the back of Neville’s neck, having wormed under his scarf.

“We can’t,” he says, breathless and quiet. “Not here.”

Neville nods, but his hips are moving, just a touch. He touches Malfoy’s thigh. The other boy swears against his mouth.

“Not here.”

\--

Nothing comes of it.

\--

Years pass. There is a war. There is a war, and Neville has never felt so broken outside of visiting his parents in the ward in St. Mungo, but living through war does that.

\--

He tries to be an Auror. There is good to be done in the world. But the system is built in such a way, and he can’t fit into it, and so he steps aside from that. He has worked too hard on peace and frustration to be good at the ass kissing involved in bureaucracy and paper work.

He spends a year traveling Europe like a Muggle, wondering if he could manage to live like that.

In a café in Budapest that is distinctly not Muggle, despite that a great many Muggles are there, he spots him—tired around the eyes, a bit spotted from age and sun over the last three years, and wearing the most atrocious paisley Neville has seen in his life—from across the half empty patio. Malfoy spots him too. They stare at each other for a long time before Malfoy folds up his distinctly not Muggle newspaper and crosses the space to sit at Neville’s table.

He has dirt under his well-manicured nails.

\--

There is, at least, a room this time.

Malfoy’s mouth tastes like mouth, once more, but different than it did when they were fifteen and hiding in the dark hallways of Hogwarts. He is no more forgiving or apologetic than he was then. Neville’s bitterness has grown rife with, what he has learned are, weeds of peace and frustration, rather than orchids. He refuses to pull any of them out. Each and every one is perfect and bright and beautiful, and he doesn’t worry about them choking each other. He has earned all that his bitterness has grown.

Where Malfoy had the dark mark, now, is a burn. Neville puts his hand on it, and when Malfoy tries to flinch away, Neville grabs his arm and holds him.

“Don’t,” Malfoy starts.

“Why not? You did it.” Neville looks at him evenly, watches him shake. “It’s part of what you were.”

There is some relief in the line of Malfoy’s shoulder that Neville uses past tense. They were children when it happened. It does not excuse Malfoy for what he did, what he was. But it is true.

Malfoy has other scars, but so does Neville. Neither of them lingers on it, after that. Malfoy is assured and practiced with him, up to a point—they both know how to kiss, but Malfoy apparently has practice in sex that Neville hadn’t considered before. His mouth is hot and wet, his teeth a little close. He chokes, but only a little, and every time Neville pulls back from him when he does, an apology on his lips, Malfoy goes for it again like he’s a starved thing.

On the other hand, Neville is slightly more self-assured when it comes to fucking. Malfoy squirms and pants, his eyes half closed and hand on his chin like he might want to muffle himself but can’t quite bring himself to. Neville fingers him out slowly, teasing on the edge of punishment, frustration, bitterness. It makes Malfoy squirm and whine and arch off the bed, clawing at him with his other hand.

“If you don’t…”

“I’ll do it even if you go off,” Neville says, shrugging. “Unless you don’t want me to.”

Malfoy looks at him, like it had never occurred to him that there were boundaries he could draw. The frustration that blooms in Neville’s chest is directed at all the people that taught Malfoy that boundaries were things to ignore, because he turned that around on so many people when he was a child.

He leans down and whispers filth in Malfoy’s ear, like he never would have when they were kissing against the stone walls of Hogwarts without touching. Years have been kind and made him creative and slightly more adventurous, and Malfoy spread out under him makes him bold, at least in the moment. He thinks he won’t remember any of it later, but Malfoy whines, clinging to his arm desperately and moving his lips to beg without speaking.

Neville grabs a condom, rolls it on, and pulls Malfoy to him like they are partners. Malfoy clings like a lamprey, shaking and desperate, and makes the softest noise when Neville goes in him.

Neither of them take very much at all, having worked the other up as much as they did with fingers and mouths. They kiss while they fuck, everything about their bodies rough and entangled. Malfoy pulls his hair a bit and Neville scratches at his arms, and they both groans wordlessly into the space between their bodies. It doesn’t even take a hand on him for Malfoy to get off, just the friction of their bodies closely together. He goes tight and hot around Neville, and Neville swears into Malfoy’s hair, not too far behind.

\--

Budapest is surprisingly young, and Neville enjoys it.

It does not hurt that Malfoy stays the whole time in the hotel with him.

\--

Back in the United Kingdom, Professor McGonagall—now Headmistress—offers Neville a position at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. They need a new Herbology Professor, and his scores from years past are still some of the best they’ve had in quite some time. She can only imagine he’s gotten better with age.

He hopes, this time, that there is not so much bitterness and sadness attached to the place. He thinks his mental and emotional garden has grown plenty peaceful, over the years.


End file.
